


in which an elevator meet-cute ensues

by valleyedprism



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Multi, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-04 23:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6681079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valleyedprism/pseuds/valleyedprism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brave and possibly ill-advised dive into writing after years of stale or unposted work. Two chapters complete and more possible. Rose/Kanaya is present and Dave/Terezi will come in if I proceed. Other ships are shrug?? or only as relevant as I deem them.  Heavy inspiration from Young Folks, Striders' Edge and Promstuck.  Links to songs or images may be provided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. baby coffee

**Author's Note:**

> I only hope I’m not so out of touch with fanfiction that this is cliché and dumb. I don’t know if I’ll continue it or not. Partly that depends on how many people I know in real life find it, partly on response, partly on drive and confidence. This ship is about the only thing I can bear to drag myself back into writing with, especially the lack of new stuff hitting the tag… Hopefully you enjoy it either way, though; this is the first fanfic I’ve released since 2011. I’m a bit rusty, and a bit wordy, heh.

I’m locking my door when I hear the ‘ _ding_ ’ of the elevator on the eleventh floor of the loft apartments I call home. _God damn, I’m already late_ , I think, and clutch the sides of my jacket together, heroically dashing the last few steps to the elevator. It’s down to the wire, the doors are coming together and I see a black-haired guy in a suit slamming the ‘close door’ button- is he serious? His eyes are in direct contact with me and I can see sweat rolling off his brow. _How childish do you have to be_ , I think. I jam my rattiest pair of Vans into the door edgewise, and see his face fall as I step in.  
  
I proceed to drag both my grubby hands down the elevator button list, hitting 10 through 2 and turning a blank expression to the man next to me, going to my socially accepted corner of the elevator. Might as well drag my new pal here down onto the lateness train. The slightly gap-toothed, overbitten frown he wears gives me some sort of terrible perverted joy. I’d almost want to gloat if it weren’t for the fact that I just woke up ten minutes ago, and am more capable of vengeance than coherent speech. He sighs and takes a sip from a cup of coffee that’s as pale as birchbark. I can’t help but become more infuriated. _Jesus Christ_ , I mumble internally, _what a pansy_. And who takes an open coffee cup out with them?  
  
I’m not really even hiding the fact that I’m staring at this stranger anymore. I’ve been in these apartments for years by this point and I’ve never seen him. Part of that has to do with the fact that anybody who wants to be this high up definitely just wants the penthouse and I don’t have many neighbors, partly because it costs a ton and not many people want to pay so much for an apartment right by Union Station. Trains are kind of loud. I have an agreement with the owner, whom I’ve known from childhood, and she figures the few hundred she loses off of me can be made up for in my willingness to do whatever the hell she requests of me, whenever. I guess it also keeps her conscience clean, that I’m staying off the streets. She didn’t tell me anyone had moved in, though, and while Kanaya does have a particular affinity for women over putrefying infected nailbeds like this one, he’s a rather well-manicured case of athlete’s foot, and I would’ve thought she’d mention him.  
  
I bring my split focus back from the depths of my pitiful childhood and direct it to the forehead of this, admittedly handsome, jackass of a stranger. He’s got bright, unnaturally blue eyes that I can’t believe I didn’t notice when he was trying so hard to throw me under the figurative community transport- he’s glaring so intensely at me that I almost admit that I care, for just a second. I shrug.  
  
“You started it, dipfuck.” I mumble. It’s one of those lines I wish I had my own drink to casually sip after. I settle for rolling my shoulders and eyes and directing my attention to a particularly dusty corner of the elevator.  
  
I’m a fucking master of nonchalance.  
  
Kanaya and I need to clean these soon; she’s been off and unseen with her long distance girlfriend for a full week and I briefly mull over possibly just polishing them by myself. Of course we’ve considered custodians, but it saves her a good thousand a month in labor that we do nearly all of the relevant work, and that thousand filters into my rent. Plus, it keeps us both humble, and when we see dickcheese and crackers like the one I share the elevator with right now, every day, we need that grounding in sweat and labor. God if it doesn’t make me bitter, though, to see this guy and his shitty knockoff Steve Maddens scuff up the floor. He turns to me, scowling over his cloudy coffee, a few teeth jutting out just over his lip.  
  
“Does it make you happy to make people late for interviews?” He says, waving his free hand. He’s got big hands, and clean, short nails on long fingers with exaggerated joints… it reminds me of my plentiful experience in foodservice in the worst way.  
  
The elevator is passing the sixth floor. We’ve been in here, probably one and a half full minutes, and this guy has obviously been stewing in it like forgotten chicken tikka marsala the whole time.  
  
“Nah, I’m more of a long walk on the beach guy,” I say, zipping my jacket half-closed over my favorite Metric shirt. “I particularly enjoy letting the sand and sweat fester, and digging sweltering pustules like yourself out afterwards. Really gets my rocks off.”  
  
I was expecting a glare, or a retch, maybe just the sweet relief of stunned silence. But this fucker starts laughing. He is literally folding like a shittily tacked poster, the ones that fall on you in the middle of the night and make you sleep with a bat next to your bed for the newly realized fear of someone breaking in. His coffee sloshes all over and I get so much angrier, now I have to mop his sticky-ass training wheels kiddie-coffee before I can even go out and meet with Kanaya and Rose…  
  
“What the fuck?” He declares, tears streaming out the sides of his eyes. He’s gotten a little coffee on his gray tweed suitcoat and I take the time to notice that it’s kind of ill-fitting, honestly. Too tight in the shoulders, and his pants are also strained a bit against what look like thicker legs. He’s not overweight, like myself, but muscular, and it looks like his suit is tailored for a twig of a man, or at least a significantly leaner one than he. Even if it doesn’t fit right, I admit to spending a little time thinking about what could be hiding under that too-small, unironed white shirt. I pull myself back to reality and grimace, giving my most incredulous face.  
  
“Are you gonna make it, dunderbumble? Should I call for some medical help?” I cross my arms, and he glances up, seemingly almost done sputtering. He cracks again, face contorting and twisting toward his left eye. He’s fully recovered by the time the door closes for the second floor, but I find myself, surprisingly, wishing this wasn’t the end. I’m a bit surprised that my sick masochism extends far enough to want to hear the blithering of Bucktooth Extraordinaire continue.  
  
When the elevator _dings_ it’s final ding, I step out, followed by the human equivalent of a venti candy-assichino. I’m used to being one of the shorter guys in a room, but he has a good seven inches on me, and I’m well-aware as he steps out nearly on my heels. I walk toward the custodial closet, not noticing that he’s followed me.  
  
As a shadow extends over my hands I shove the keys back in my pocket and turn.  
“Yes? Is there something you want?” I try to affect my best customer service face, but when I notice that it’s just The Big Bad(ly Tailored) Ensemble I let the fake cheer fall. He extends a hand.  
  
“My name is John. Egbert. How are you?”  
  
I blink and feel my own teeth slide out over my bottom lip in pure astonishment. It’s a bad habit Kanaya is trying to help me break, but when you’re confronted with such pure unaware shit-stainedness, you can’t help but retreat to what you know to help yourself deal. I offer my hand opposite his, grip it way too hard, and give him a short handshake.  
  
He twists my arm sideways and ‘slams’ it into the air across my body, smirking.  
  
“Guns like these and you don’t think I can whoop you at arm wrestling?” He asks, as if I’m supposed to have any clue what that means. He breaks to flex, but stops himself, noticing his almost-certainly borrowed tux probably can’t take that heat. I hear a seam pop and he blushes.  
  
“Uh. Karkat Vantas. Don’t you have somewhere to be.” I have literally never seen such an emotional face, his mouth drops open and he turns on a heel, shooting out the doors to the apartment and sloshing the last bits of his coffee on the exterior frame.  
  
Through the massive amounts of incredulous seething hateful red I see, I can at least appreciate that his ill-fitting pants offer a great view.  
  
I unlock the closet, set a caution sign in the lefthand elevator between the doors, and begin to mop.


	2. froyo?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well Ness,  
> Word count to reach the next chapter……. 0

Rose is sitting at our usual table and tapping my best friend’s watch when I arrive. Kanaya smiles softly and I take my seat across from them, noting that they’ve already ordered me a lemonade. It’s a bit colder than room temperature and a few shades lighter than average, presumably due to the fact that I also like a lot of ice.

“Kind of you to drop by, Karkat.” Rose croons, cradling Kanaya’s arm. They make me a little bit sick in both a nostalgic and envious way, but I’m still very happy for Kanaya. She never needed a relationship, but the comfort and stability she found in Rose, even with her being across the country 70% of the year, left her very happy even in stressful times. Her previous girlfriend had never been so good to her, constantly spending her money on impulsive jaunts and frivolous pirate-y shit and flirting with other people in front of her.

“Sorry, your gal pal here forgot to inform me that I had a new floormate and that he uses the satellite-dish-jammed-sideways in his mouth for receiving only the purest asshole-inspiring radiowaves, so I had to mop an entire mug of Baby’s First Coffee off the lobby and elevator floors.”  
I sip my lemonade, a little glad that the extra water is there. Only so much bitterness can be caged in a person at one time.

“Oh! You met John?” Rose asks, Kanaya rolling her eyes and pursing her lips slightly. I can tell she’d gotten a similar impression from Goggles Cornball, but in the interests of entertaining Rose, I decide to fish for a little information. Plus, he was attractive, and pickings are thin on the 11th floor of a mostly middle age business loft.

“He’s an old, old friend. We met back in the very beginning of our forays onto the web- he has terrible taste in movies, but after Dave prodded me into snooping through the Con Air entry on IMDB I found him quoting and remixing the film’s most… memorable… lines to strangers in the discussion area. Imagine your first greeting to a new best friend being ‘put the bad review back in the box’. That’s John Egbert.” She has a sparkle in her eye and I see Kanaya’s face perk up- it’s pretty clear Rose once felt a deeper fondness for the asshole, but she’s just happy to see her girlfriend so lost in her memories. It’s interesting to hear that both Dave and Rose know this guy and I’ve never once heard of him. My friends are in general filthy rich and famous though, so maybe it isn’t, so much. Rose sips her coffee, leaning on Kanaya’s shoulder.

“He’s got a job interview with Von Maur today, you know,” Rose comments. “he wants to be one of their pianists.” Honestly, one shirt from Von Maur, even off the clearance rack, probably costs more than I’m comfortable spending on anything other than the India House All-Day-Buffet but hey, can’t knock a retail job when you work it yourself. I wasn’t fully aware they actually had live ‘entertainment’, but seeing him as a classical pianist definitely put his gorgeous hands into perspective. They probably stretch across the keys like a brush on a canvas, his long fingers dancing over the notes like the very waltz he plays-

“He’s definitely very talented.” Kanaya adds. “He played us a Nickelback cover and it came very close to not making me want to put my head in a bucket of water.”

‘ _Okay, so not so classical, but definitely ass taste in music._ ’ I think, chuckling a little. Kanaya smiles again, almost definitely onto me already, that nosy broad. I can’t sneak anything past these two. Rose has pulled out her phone- an incredibly well taken care of, caseless rose gold 6s- and is tapping away with her thumb, probably letting John know that I am a thirsty fuck. It dings, though, before she’s finished. She frowns and puts it away hurriedly, tapping Kanaya on the arm and pulling an uncharacteristic face. I’ve only seen it contort that way once before, when Vriska had strolled into the café only moments after us.

“We don’t have time to actually do lunch, do we?” I sigh, watching Kanaya quickly pack her sensible little folding-top crossbody bag. She had probably gotten it from Von Maur, honestly. I might be living paycheck to paycheck but she was doing alright, and her very wealthy novelist girlfriend probably wasn’t too hard-up for cash either. It wasn’t like I could really afford lunch anyway, I still have two days to go till payday and only half a sub sandwich in the fridge and twenty three dollars to do it on.

Kanaya winces and gets up from the table, handing me a ten to cover our drinks and rushing away, gesturing at her phone, probably to imply she’ll text me about it soon. I give them a half-hearted wave, and try to offer a supportive smile, but curse John under my breath for making me late and missing out on time spent with Kanaya.

After the tab is settled, I mount my bike and head off in the direction of Von Maur, hoping to maybe catch John nearby and ‘accidentally’ bump into him. I mull over the fact that this is kind of weird, but I’ve done worse in the past trying to get someone’s attention and he had thought being compared to infected wounds was very funny, so I figure it’s probably worth a shot anyway.

The department store is very quiet, notably currently absent of the advertised piano music, and the employees seem on high alert when I walk in. I guess they’re not huge fans of Metric, or maybe my stained jeans just don’t quite fit in with the low-middle end designer clothing sitting just a few feet away. Far be it for me to distinguish between Marc Jacobs sweatpants and ones you pick up at Walmart in the out of season racks.

I browse through the sixty dollar dress shirts, as if purchasing one of them was even slightly on my radar, and in the corner of my eye I spot that familiar ill-fitting gray suit shaking hands with an older, balding gentleman. John turns and his chest is puffed out, almost threatening to burst the whole seam on his shoulders. I head out the next nearest door and turn the corner around the store toward where he’ll exit, confident that I’ll bump into him any second-

“Karkat! Karkat, right? What are you doing here? Oh my god, I’m so sorry about the coffee! I had a job interview and I was already late because Dave’s stupid suit wouldn’t button and…” He loses me to my thoughts at ‘Dave’. Rose hadn’t mentioned them being an item but if they’re sharing clothes it could be entirely possible. I frown and feel my teeth slide forward again, zoning out, staring at John’s left eye. There’s a weird fleck of black just to the right of his pupil… or maybe it’s on his glasses…

“Anyway I think that interview went great! He thought that my pop knowledge would probably add a lot to the peak ‘young folks’ shopping hours. He seemed super impressed with my jazzed up [Get Lucky](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLKvxKaAhOQ) rendition and the pay here is like three bucks more an hour compared to… Oh, man, I’m sorry, you probably don’t care.” He shrugs and rubs his neck and I hear that thread finally pop, his face going ashen as it dawns on him how badly he’s beating this loaner up. I point down the block at an Orange Leaf.

“Yeah, I was just gonna go get a frozen yogurt. I guess if you’re not going to yak my ear off onto the pavement you can come along, but don’t expect me to care too much.” John perks up immediately, blushing a little. I fucking despise frozen yogurt with every fiber of my being but it seems like a good excuse to monopolize his time. Plus I have a coupon to get the first three ounces free, which, honestly, is the only reason this is even a feasible waste of my money. I see some sort of realization cross his face and give him a questioning look.

“Oh, I’m super allergic to peanuts… maybe we could do something else?” he mumbles. I know for a fact that as long as you avoid the peanut butter flavor and the toppings bar you’re fully peanut free, but John has just handed me the keys to a free date and I’m taking it.

“Yeah, that’s ok. You wanna go to the park? There’s a small one a few blocks from here. The LARPers might even be out. How long have you, um, played piano for?” John grins ear to ear and I grab my bike, a little smile even forming on my own face. Maybe this isn’t such a bad idea.


End file.
